Use existing textures rather than your own. It helps to keep your ships within FL style and does less impact on performance due to re-use of existing textures rather than loading new ones per each ship model. Freelancer textures are small and will require effort with UV mapping to make ships look nice. There is a collection of vanilla ships in milkshape format with textures around, very useful to use as a reference.
Freelancer UTF editor can export data from material libraries and ship files.